For 10 years, Glyn Worsley was a constable with Greater Manchester Police.

Now he sells a hi-tech machine that warns drivers of speed cameras ahead.

But, according to 44-year-old Glyn, the radar detectors which bleep when motorists approach a radar-triggered speed camera do not simply help people avoid the dreaded three points and é60 fine while treating the roads as a race track.

Instead Glyn, who admits he used to drive too fast on the roads himself, says they make motorists safer, slower and more responsible.

Glyn works for Bolton-based firm Cometech, which sells the radar detectors.

At first he was completely against the device, which is powered by the car battery and plugs into the cigarette lighter.

But after trying it out he realised that he was actually driving more slowly and safely as a result of anticipating the beep of the machine. He said: "At first I had my police head on and was completely against the idea of the detectors.

"But my partner, who often commented that I drove too fast, pointed out that I was generally driving slower as a result of having the machine on."

Now he says he won't go anywhere without one and insists his customers are respectable people, not boy racers desperate to avoid the law.

He also believes that it is reckless driving rather than going a little over the current limit which is the main cause of accidents and fatalities.

He said: "One of my customers is 80, and about 40 per cent are women. There has to be something wrong when about seven out of 10 normally law-abiding people will admit to speeding."

The use of the é349 scanners was outlawed by the Wireless and Telegraphy Act of 1949, but a Queen's Bench divisional court judgement in January, 1998, found that the Act did not preclude their use.